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A-Channel Review or Huh Hoo Hi Hah Hohi Hahah

A-Channel is another slice of life focused on a group of 4 girls in high school, typical shit you’ve seen a billion times. That’s fine, I like those types of shows when they aren’t harem shit or focused on fanservice – if directed right they can be really nice. This is sort of different from those situations though.

The show mainly falls into the latter, it’s charming and relaxing while also being pretty funny at times and very cute a lot of times…but the director decided to take down the overall quality of the show in one quick move. He put insert songs every episode. Don’t get me wrong, that works sometimes, look at Honey and Clover – an amazingly well done series that has a featured song by Spitz in every single episode…but those insert songs had merit and worth to what was going on and increased your immersion, it made everything going on more impactful or meaningful. Here…it’s totally the opposite. They used character songs for the insert songs and – instead of having the song actually serve a purpose, they just play over a poorly done still-image montage for literally a full length track. So anywhere from 3 to like 6 minutes per episode would be JUST A MONTAGE OF PICTURES with a crappy character song playing over it. This is fine the first time, and it’d be okay every now and then…but literally every episode having this just was a terrible idea and the show REALLY suffers because of it.

Video games are hurting our children! *Animated – click to see*

Aside that, it’s an alright series. The art and animation is well done and smooth, and the style and colors are bright and refreshing. The character designs are standard fare, but with the style of tiny blobs of cute they have a unique fresh feel to them, which I really liked a lot.

The voice acting is fine, a lot of big voices here and they all deliver great performances as you’d expect, but it’s nothing stellar or worth delving into too much.

The music aside the insert songs was pretty good. I especially liked the opening and the animation along with it, which felt like they hired a M@D creator straight off of Nico Nico and had him do it, it looks exactly like the type of stuff you’d see there from the more well known creators and the song is very light and fitting of the show. The insert songs themselves aren’t bad, they are pretty typical for character songs, but their use is what made them terrible. As music, they are on par with any other character song from any other show.

The moms are really cute too, as you can see on the left.

The series overall has a lot of charm and the characters are rather cute, but the show’s one major bad decision really drags down the entire viewing experience. It’s definitely not a bad show though and it’s really pretty relaxing and nicely paced while keeping plenty of chill comedy mixed in (such as a character biting her tongue and trying to talk).

I recommend it to people who enjoy these sorts of shows – but I also recommend skipping the montage parts of the episodes. It’s okay the first time, the second time…but then it just keeps happening and makes the show a chore. If you skip these sections the enjoyability of the series goes up a lot and I’ve noticed this being true for many other viewers of the show as well.